Bus investigation complete, says driver had green

Report: Fire truck system disrupted signal predictability

By Staff Report

Posted: October 16, 2012 at 2:20 p.m.

Tracy Neal
The scene of a school bus accident in Bentonville on Oct. 4.

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The police investigation of a school bus accident that severely injured a Bentonville High School student has been completed. The investigation found that the student was crossing without a protected signal and that the driver had a green light, according to a news release.

Lisa Fitzner was driving the bus that hit 17-year-old Megan Davis on Oct. 4 at the intersection of S.E. 14th Street and S.E. P Street. The driver was distracted by a student, but the accident would have happened anyway, the news release stated. A broken crosswalk button was not found to have contributed to the accident.

A city system that allows fire trucks to change signals green was active when Davis was hit, according to the news release.

"This activation disrupted the predictability of the traffic itself," the news release stated. "This disruption may explain why witnesses, and possibly the involved pedestrian, were led to believe that the school bus driver had disregarded a red light."

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After reading the news release the scenio of events make sense. Im glad all this was is an accident and the young lady involved hopefully will be fully recovered. However, the fact that the city's traffic signal pre-emption system shut down the cross walk making the intersection unprotected while there were no emegency vehicles running through at the time needs to be immediately addressed so, in the future people wont go across that busy highway unprotected against traffic. Could it be that the young lady had prior experience with this crossing and knew the signal never changed so she was just timing her crossing like she might have done before. She might not be the only crossers who have gave up and lost patience with the crossing signal and have taken their own chances with traffic. The city needs to fix this now.

Posted by: Ludwick

October 16, 2012 at 4 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )